1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a culturing apparatus equipped with a cutting device. More specifically, it relates to a culturing apparatus capable of obtaining new cultured strips to be provided for culturing, by cutting callus or plant bodies grown in a liquid culture medium or solid culture medium (hereinafter referred to as plant bodies) without removing the same from the culturing tank.
2. Description of the Related Art
The methods of culturing a tissue culture of plants include a method in which culturing is performed by using a solid culture medium such as agar, and a method using a liquid culture medium. The former method has an advantage in that a differentiating proliferation can be easily effected, and the latter method is advantageous in that the cultural materials need not be planted in the bed, but can be thrown into the medium, whereby troublesome labor is not required and the method is thus suitable for bulk cultivation. Nevertheless, in either method, when a material to be provided for cultivation must be obtained aseptically, for example, when scales of lily bulbs are to be cultured, the scales must be peeled from the bulbs, while sterilized under aseptic conditions such as on a clean bench, sheet by sheet by a scalpel and tweezers, and further, to improve the proliferation percentage, the scale must be finely cut with a scalpel, and thus considerable labor and time are required when obtaining cultured materials.
The situation is the same when the plant bodies obtained by cultivation are utilized as cultured materials and further culturing is desired by using these materials, and after the plant bodies differentiated and proliferated in liquid culture medium or a solid culture medium are aseptically taken out of the culturing device, strips of the cultured materials must be obtained by dissecting the plant bodies as described above.
When utilizing plant bodies obtained by cultivation and repeating culturing, according to the prior art method, the plant bodies must be taken out every time culturing is to be repeated and strips of the cultured material must be obtained manually.
To enable production on an industrial scale, desirably strips of the plant bodies which are to be used as the cultured materials are obtained.